Michael Faraday … l’homme qui a connu la science avec Dieu!

You cannot find, perhaps in the whole history of science, a case more inviting to contemplation than “Michael Faraday”, he grew up in a poor family in a district of London, was slow in his learning. and did not complete his studies because he was unable to pronounce certain letters easily, and even when he was found, Humphrey Davy, the famous chemist of the time, was led astray by the discoverer of sodium and potassium, and the signs of his genius appeared.

Without a background in physics or mathematics, and without wealth or employment in scientific research, you would have expected that, no matter how talented Faraday was, he would inevitably hold to the limits of his hobby, but he did not do it. We are talking here about one of the greatest scientists of the nineteenth century, the father of electromagnetism, no student at different stages of education can only pass the name of this man who was associated with various laws, quantities and innovations which made what we know about physics, and by extension the entire universe, what it is today. You just have to know that without the accomplishments of this man, you would not be able to read these words now.

For this reason, Faraday’s life has attracted the attention of many writers. You will even find its history in almost every physics books presented to the public. After leaving school you usually couldn’t find anyone to linger on, there was self-taught Faraday.

This type of learning differs from the curriculum system in that it allows your passion to guide you, there is no need for you to keep learning things that you don’t like just because they are in the classroom. school program, take language lessons, for example, Literature or geography for a high school student who loves physics, Faraday was free to do so. Everything went to read only what the writers liked about this workshop, but that’s only half the story.

During his work at the studio, the most influential book on Faraday was “The Improvement of the Mind” (2) by author, theologian, poet, experimental philosopher and famous hymn writer in Christian circles. , “Isaac Watts”. , reading, discussing and how to write notes, in fact, Watts’ advice was the reason Faraday moved from a career as a bookbinder to working with Humphrey Davy.

Watts advised his readers to keep a journal for blogging, as well as the importance of attending conferences and exchanging messages with people of mutual interest. He was envied, and when he wanted to work for the man, he sent him these wonderful notes as a gift, and as soon as Davy saw them he asked him to work as an assistant, and from there began the path of Faraday towards scientific creativity.

But Faraday didn’t find this book in the bookbinding shop, it was his book. Faraday was a religious Christian, but he followed a sect called “the Galasians” (3), which was founded around 1730 by a Christian priest called “John Glas”, who built his ideas on the basis that he says the kingdom of Christ is spiritual, so the Christian church cannot be built or supported with arms or political actions on any basis other than the word and spirit of Christ.

From there Glass was interested in the committed and dedicated literal application of the words of the Bible, and when he was deposed due to his Church of Scotland beliefs, he founded his own church and his ideas grew. widespread throughout Europe., Who was brought up on these teachings.

But the followers of this church were relatively few in number, and they were regarded with some contempt among Christians, perhaps for this reason that they did not pay much attention to the matter of preaching their ideas, a a point which greatly affected the young Faraday by subordination. , as he was not keen on controversy to prove the validity of his religious approach, and so He would not have used science to confirm the correctness of his path to God, which made it empty for another thing more important for him, which is to use God to confirm to him the correctness of his way in science!

To understand the depth of this idea and its effect on Faraday, consider a famous quote in which Faraday says: “The book of nature which we are to read is written with the fingers of God.” Faraday uses here the metaphor of the two books (4), which says that God revealed himself through the “Book of Nature”. With its organizing laws, and the “Bible” in its historical narration and its consideration of miracles.

But the metaphors in both books are generally used as proof of the existence of God. As for Faraday, he used it to search for truths among the mountains of opinions, intuitions and common sense, so he imagined that scientific facts are God’s words in the book of nature. between experimental facts and theoretical explanations.

Likewise, Faraday embarked on the laws of nature. As long as facts are the language of nature, the laws of nature were the fixed grammatical rules of that language, which tie words together in useful sentences, and Faraday once wrote: “God treats his physical creation with its laws. ” Faraday believed that God’s creation of the universe included the creation of laws that they work together in harmony to maintain the balance of its components, and therefore are constant laws that do not change.

In his book “Michael Faraday: The Sandman and the World”, George Cantor *, professor of history of science at the University of Leeds in Great Britain, says that principles such as “the harmony of nature”, “Simplicity as complex as it appears”, and “the unity of nature” was not the end of Faraday’s path, that is, he did not achieve it through his work in the context of scientific research, on the contrary, the points from which he left in the direction of scientific research, and therefore Faraday’s efforts to unify electricity, magnetism and light were consistent with his metaphysical beliefs.

But the question goes further than that, since Faraday had developed (5) a model based on what resembles – to some extent – the first law of thermodynamics, “the law of survival of energy”, which says that energy is neither destroyed nor created out of nothing. Converted from one image to another. In a group of lectures he gave in 1846, he explicitly said that God had put a specific amount of power into the creation of the universe, so that he could not decrease or increase the universe, because that human beings are incapable of controlling God’s creation, whether it is this power or the laws he created to govern it.

So Faraday’s being is a precise system designed according to a divine plan that laws were used to organize it.These original laws are still in effect until now, due to the perfection of God’s plan, and this are also simple laws of complexity. of nature, and are consistent with each other because they serve a purpose, and are valid for every time and place because they are cosmic in nature, and scientists can watch over nature and collect facts with wisdom understanding the small number of laws that govern cosmic phenomena, it is the universe in which Faraday entered the field of science and not what he left.

Some people may see a contradiction in these ideas with scientific methodology which may require a complete absence of previous ideas before entering the realm of fact finding, but this is unrealistic. Usually, we are laden with previous hypotheses, whatever their source, and these ideas can confirm or contradict our scientific results.And, as Karl Popper (6), the most famous philosopher of science, explains, objectivity and the rationality of scientific progress is not due to personal objectivity and to the rationality of the scientist himself. . On the contrary, mathematical proof or scientific theories can be discovered by unconscious endeavors, guided by inspiration of an aesthetic (or religious, for example) nature.Instead of rational thought, but Popper – like Faraday, although they differ dramatically in the philosophy of science that each of them espouses – agreed that this disclosure should be subject to rational scrutiny.

In any case, the case of Faraday opens the door to the contemplation of one of the best-known models which explain the possible relationship between religion and science, it is the “model of dialogue” (7) which presupposes the existence common ground between the two fields in their previous assumptions, methods and concepts. For example, religious doctrine may have encouraged science, assuming that creation – being a conceived product – is an ordered product and susceptible of rational interaction, so one might expect that there are laws which can be discovered from this idea, which is perhaps what happened in Faraday’s case.

Ian Barbour (8), the American physicist specializing in the relationship between science and religion, believes that religion can be pushed towards something deeper than that. Since God’s creation by nature is limited in power compared to God’s total capabilities, the laws of nature cannot be achieved automatically. Rather, some effort must be made to interpret it, which may result in the need to conduct an experimental investigation or work on theory building, especially since obtaining religious knowledge itself may require a certain logic or the creation of intellectual models or metaphors, etc. Publicity

Despite the support this model finds that there is some sort of dialogue or integration between science and religion, especially on the part of the clergy, it is not the most common in the field of philosophy that studies science and religion (where philosophers are more inclined to the “non-interference” hypothesis) For two main reasons, the first is that at some point this dialogue will cause a critical contradiction between science and religion, which in turn will lead to the second reason, which is that science turns into an arena that tries to prove or deny the existence of God.

In Faraday’s case, his earlier ideas derived from his doctrine led – with useful results – to major scientific problems (9) in his thought, for example he had opposed the atomic school on the basis of the same ideas, and he also had reservations. on the definition and definition of “energy” What prevented him from advancing in his understanding, the source of these reservations was his belief in a “universe full of energy”, and that God alone knew what it was. Faraday started from this point to reject mechanical philosophy in the first place. In contrast, you won’t find many comments from Faraday on the issue of the creation of the universe, and his religiosity literally didn’t explain the number of days the universe was created in one interpretation.

But the most inviting reason for contemplation in this context was that the scholars who decided to fight the two worlds together, the world of religion and the world of science, and who accomplished together in them, were deeply desirous of separate the two fields, and did not slip into the goal of placing religion in scientific conflicts or placing science in religious conflicts. Perhaps for the simple reason that they know that religious beliefs if they lead to scientific ideas then they do not literally do so i.e. they reside in the bottom of the scientist as an indicative model , not scientific facts recorded in his holy book, whatever it is.

Faraday was one of them, along with George Lumeter, the Belgian Catholic astronomer and priest who concluded that the universe is expanding and led it to the Big Bang model. You may not even know that the Hubble constant is now known as the “Lumeter Hubble Constant” modified by astronomers in 2018, to fulfill the human right to this most famous constant in cosmology.

Lumeter – although he was the work of a clergyman – was perhaps more careful than Faraday himself on this point (10) as regards the separation between science and religion. He often stressed that “the Bible is not a scientific book. Religion ”and he referred to this harmony between his work on science and religion once, saying,“ I was interested in attaining truth from the point of view of religious salvation just as I wanted to attain it from the point of view of religion. of scientific certainty. seemed to me that there were two paths to the truth, and I decided to follow them both. “”.